Category Archives: WSOP

I checked my earnings from this blog today and I found that I made $500 from one site and $180 from another. Plus I might have made a bit from other affiliate sites that I’ve forgotten about. So that’s about $700 from this blog. Not bad for a site that was originally meant to be a sort of personal log of my poker career.

I haven’t played poker for about 4 years now and I really don’t regret stopping. Poker is such a waste of time and life. I think I might have made it big but I’m really happy I stopped when I did.

WordPress.com don’t really let you advertise but you can sneak advertising links into posts here and there.

This site has now had over 50,000 hits so even if a small percentage of visitors are clicking links and a small number of those clicks lead to people signing up to poker sites, the blog makes money. The blog hasn’t made any money in the last 3 years though and I haven’t really been giving the site much attention.

There’s been a lot of news in America about online poker sites being shut down. FullTilt and PokerStars being hit hard. I think it’s great that the American government decided to ban online gambling. It ruins people’s lives and is a waste of time. I’m not sure why they did it because they were probably making a lot of money out of it from taxing the poker sites, but I think it’s a great decision.

This year’s WSOP is running ATM.

So far the names I recognise that have won bracelets this year are: John Juanda and Bertrand Grospellier. A lot of the big players aren’t playing in this year’s WSOP, which, I think, is to do with the ban of online poker in the US.

Eugene Katchalov and Amir Lehavot also won bracelets at this year’s WSOP – both are Jewish (there might also be more Jewish winners this year, I didn’t research it much). Well done to my Jewish brothers, although it would be better if they were to use their talents to do something more productive with their lives. Anyway, they join the long list of successful Jewish poker players.

The total prize pool for the event was $61,043,600 and there were 6,494 entrants.

Ivey and Shulman were the big names at the table. Ivey is accepted by all to be the poker player in the world and may even be the best of all time. Ivey won 2 WSOP bracelets this year and has won a total of 7 in his life.

While many in the Penn and Teller Theater were rooting for Phil Ivey to take the Main Event title, the acclaimed pro does have something to hold onto from his 2009 run. With the seventh place prize of $1,404,014 and his other two bracelet wins, the man considered by many to be the finest poker player in the world increased his lifetime tournament earnings to $12,236,714. This leaves the Full Tilt Poker pro only slightly over $190,000 behind fellow top professional and PokerStars sponsored player Daniel Negreanu for the most money earned in a career.

Finally, the WSOP crossed an important threshold. With the $174,013,315 in prize pools paid out to winners this year, the WSOP crossed the $1 billion mark in prize pools in its history. In the past four years, there has been approximately $685 million in prize pools generated; in the years from 1970 to 2005, only $354 million was generated. The grand total of prize pools in the history of the WSOP now stands at $1,041,266,592.

Here are some of the big hands of the final table:

This is Ivey being eliminated:

The crowd was on their feet. Seasoned pros with millions in prop bets on the line crossed their fingers and looked heavenward. Phil Ivey was all-in with against Moon’s , a nearly 3-1 favorite to double up. Hold. One time. Please.

“Good hand,” Moon said, looking at Ivey.

“Good hand? Good hand he said!” Ivey laughed. “Well it’s better than mine,” he said, biting into an apple.

As we all know now, the flop was a disaster for the seven-time bracelet winner, coming down .

“How do they put a f***ing queen right in the window,” Mike Matusow muttered, as he and Howard Lederer looked on.

Ivey, however, calmly took another bite of his apple as he waited for the turn and river to seal his elimination, still chewing as he shook hands around the table and made his exit.

In the front row, Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy (one of Joe Cada’s backers) couldn’t hide his ear-to-ear grin as he mentally counted up the tens of thousands more he just won with his horse taking a bigger lead in the race.

Ivey making a bad fold with his pockets Jacks:

On the last hand before the dinner break, Ivey opened from under the gun, then folded to Saout’s three-bet after a long stay in the tank. We were “wamboozled” to discover that Ivey folded in that spot while Saout held .

A good bluff by Cada on Moon:

Hand 53 saw Cada make a river raise on a board of , Moon looking him up with for aces up. As it turned out, Cada was bluffing with nothing more than a small busted flush draw, the in his hand.

A terrible bad beat for Saout by chamipon Cada:

Everyone had barely recovered from Buchman’s fourth-place elimination, when Cada stuffed his 40 remaining big blinds in the middle, four-bet shoving with pocket deuces, only to run into Saout’s pocket queens. It looked like curtains for Cada, who had already escaped elimination so many times, but there was still plenty of run-good left in the 21-year-old Michigander. The hit the flop, and the room exploded as Cada leapt into the embrace of his yellow-shirted fans while Saout’s cheering section looked ready to burst into tears.

Ivey also had a tonne of sidebets on him winning the event. He’d have taken home an extra 5 or 6 million dollars from fellow poker pros had he won the event.

With still a monstrous field of roughly 2,500 players remaining in this year’s main event, Bloch offered Ivey 99:1 odds that he wouldn’t win the tournament.

“He took $20,000 from his pocket and he threw it to Andy,” Elezra said. That spur-of-the-moment decision could cost Bloch nearly $2 million.

Before the buzz had even begun to subside from the poker community becoming aware of the Bloch bet, Tom “durrrr” Dwan reportedly admitted that he would have to give Ivey $1 million as well if he were to become world champion.

Phil Ivey has proven beyond any doubt this year that he is the best poker player in the world. All the poker pros have said he’s the best in the past. This year he’s on the final table of the WSOP Main Event – a tournament with 6500 entrants. He’s also already won 2 WSOP bracelets in other events this year.

Ivey is also a champion of online poker. There’s no game this man isn’t good at. He stands in the position in the poker world that Tiger Woods stands in in the Golf world and Roger Federer in the Tennis world.

It’s disappointing that there are no superstars left in the event, nonetheless it should be a great final table.

The most notable name at the table is David “Chino” Rheem. Rheem had many professionals supporting him on his way to the final table including J.C. Tran, Nam and Tommy Le, Greg Mueller, Quinn Do, Tommy Hang, Michael and Robert Mizrachi, and Mark Newhouse. This had to do with the fact that many of them had traded for percentages with Rheem or bought a piece of him in the tournament to diversify their chances of making some money, but they were also there to cheer on one of their own. Rheem had a very up and down day. He started off short-stacked. He then went on to become one of the chip leaders and finished the day short-stacked again.

Tiffany Michelle, the last woman in the tournament was knocked out in 17th place for a win of $334,535.

Day 6 is over and we’re down to the last 3 tables with only 27 players left.

All the big names left in the tournament were knocked out today. Here are the eliminations:

64th place: Victor Ramdin — $96,500

45th place: Phil Hellmuth — $154,401

30th place: Mike “The Mouth” Matusow — $193,000

I really wanted to see either Hellmuth or Matusow make the final table. Sadly, it isn’t too be.

Phil Hellmuth caused some controversy at the tables today. In the last hand of play last night, he was given a one-orbit ban for losing his temper. He lost his temper in a hand with Christian Dragomir when Dragomir cracked Phil’s Ace-King with Ten-Four suited.

This morning when play continued, Phil was at the tables playing his cards. The ban had been overruled. “Warnings and penalties are intended to correct inappropriate behavior and our rulings should be as fair as possible, given the circumstances,” said Jeffrey Pollack, Commissioner of the WSOP. “In this instance, the punishment did not fit the crime.”

It is a bit harsh to give a player a ban for the next day of play, seeing as he would definitely have calmed down for the next day’s play. However, I wonder if the ban would have been lifted had it been an unknown player. Did Phil get special treatment for being an 11 time WSOP bracelet winner?

Phil got knocked out when his Ace-Queen offsuit lost to Andrew Rosskamm’s pocket Jacks. The two players were allin preflop. Hellmuth earned $154,400 for his 45th-place finish, bringing his WSOP career total earnings to $6,008,145. After politely shaking the hands of his tablemates, Hellmuth exited the tournament area with a storm of obscenities, cursing his inability to “catch a break.”

Matusow Takes a Wrong Turn, Eliminated in 30th Place ($193,000)

Right before the players went on break, Paul Snead raised to 200,000 and Mike Matusow repopped it to 660,000 from the big blind. Snead made the call and the flop came A A 5. Both players checked and the turn brought the 9, the card of death as far as Matusow was concerned. He bet 500,000 and Snead shoved all in. Matusow made the call and showed down A J for a set. Unfortunately for “The Mouth,” Snead turned over A 9 for a full house on the turn. Matusow needed a jack to survive, but the K fell on the river and the biggest name left in the main event took a sick beat and made his exit in 30th place.